Mass Deception
by Remakeillusions
Summary: Her knuckles whitened around the cool grip of her kunai, the one she always kept under her pillow, as she watched her would-be assassin finally flounder into her room, her eyes flicked to his face and her mouth fell open with a near inaudible gasp. Feverish blue eyes stared back, blond hair matted to his forehead. "Naruto!" Strong!Smart!Naruto. NaruSaku


**Disclaimer: If i owned Naruto, it would have ended in narusaku. I do not own the cover photo (but i don't know who does, someone let me know so i can properly give them credit)**

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Sakura groggily awoke to the sound of her window opening. She lay still for a moment, deepening her breaths in a faked continued slumber. Her eyes slit open when she heard clumsy movement, the last dregs of sleep fading and her mind going into high alert. Someone was entering her room. Upon realization she became a flurry of blankets, flashing green eyes and steel glinting dangerously only a moment later.

Attempted assassinations were not unheard of in Konoha no sato and Sakura had slowly been making a reputation for herself. She was the apprentice of the legendary Tsunade of the Sannin, making her a target for those with a vendetta for the blonde Hokage, she was also a capable medic and an excellent fighter, recently defeating her first S-class missing-nin _S_ _asori of the red sand._

Her knuckles whitened around the cool grip of her kunai, the one she always kept under her pillow, it was a _shinobi_ village after all, as she watched her would-be assassin finally flounder into her room.

Already assessing her opponent, she took in his dark clothing -because it was clearly a he- the series of holsters attached to his belt and his empty hands. she scoffed. 'cocky bastard'. Taijutsu was one of her forte's. Her eyes flicked to his face and her mouth fell open with a near inaudible gasp. Feverish blue eyes stared back, blond hair matted to his forehead. "Naruto?!"

She watched in growing alarm as he leaned heavily against her wall for a moment, breathing harshly in the silence and clutching his side with one hand while the other dangled uselessly beside him. He gave her a weak smile then slid down the pale wall, leaving a smear of blood on the wallpaper as he collapsed. Sakuras eyes froze in fascinated horror on the red stain for a moment, trailing down to her crumpled teammate, so dark in comparison to the cream colour it normally was, before she snapped back to attention.

In a few quick strides the pink haired kunoichi was at his side, hands aglow with green healing chakra as she scanned for injuries she couldn't see. "what happened?" she snapped, in full no-nonsense medic mode now. Her eyes still widened though and she took a trembling breath at the extent of the injuries. Deep laceration on the left side, the blade had gone deep enough to pierce the lung. Internal hemorrhaging. Fractured collarbone. Severed muscle in the left bicep. Unknown poison running through his body. Sakuras hands shook and her face paled, He had burned out chakra coils as well, ensuring a quick and painful death for most shinobi, she was glad Naruto seemed to be the exception.

Taking a few deep breaths to calm herself as much as she could, she started on the pierced lung and bleeding. At least then he wouldn't bleed out or suffocate before anything else happened. The poison would take too much time to try to extract and the arm and collarbone could wait. His coils were the most serious but there was nothing she could do other than circulate medical chakra throughout his body to keep him alive.

Sakura was shocked out of her thoughts by a bloody hand grasping her wrist. Her green eyes snapped up and she looked into Naruto's suddenly clear cobalt ones. He tugged and brought her hand down to his abdomen in a suddenly vice-like grip. "Coils...first." Naruto wheezed out. his voice was raspy and a trickle of blood bubbled at his mouth before trailing down his chin.

Sakura stared for a moment with wide eyes. "But I can't heal them! It would take a whole team of medics before chakra could flow through them and you'll bleed out before then Naruto!" her voice had slowly raised in volume and desperation was leaking into her tone.

"No." he gasped, his eyes had glazed over again and his mind was fogging over again. 'Damn poison'. He swallowed hard. "Kyuubi can...do...rest...please trust-" the rest of his words were cut off by a low moan as his head rolled forward, face scrunched with pain.

Sakura let out a breath she hadn't been holding. "Okay then." She closed her eyes for a second. "Alright." She said with more conviction. "I trust you Naruto... but if you die I'll personally drag you back to the world of the living so i can kill you again." she growled, masking her worry. Naruto was in too much pain to smile at her weak joke. Another moment later and her hands were once again covered in medical chakra, the green glow illuminating the small section of the room they occupied.

She directed her chakra deeper, following it with her mind until it reached his coils, she was almost jolted out of the delicate procedure when Naruto's coils started absorbing the chakra themselves, shocking her so much she had to momentarily pause in her work. Slowly the burnt out pathways healed from the inside out, and slowly little dregs of chakra started seeping through, until their was a steady stream. A miniscule amount compared to what he could normally conjure up, but enough to keep him alive.

Throughout the entire procedure Naruto didn't move an inch other than to bite back a groan every now and again when she had to push her chakra through a particularly burned and destroyed pathway.

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hours later, when the sky had turned from an inky black to pre-dawn grey, Sakura rocked back to sit on her heels. She grinned grimly and wiped the sweat that had been beading on her brow for the last half hour off with the back of her bloodied hand. Looking down she saw her teammates furrowed brows and clenched jaw, gently she patted his cheek with the back of her hand. "Hey." his frown only deepened "Naruto, come on, wake up." he must've been on the verge of unconsciousness. Sakura was surprised he had lasted this long at all.

Naruto groggily opened his eyes and hissed with pain as he tried to move. His face was dangerously pale and covered with a sheen of sweat. His condition was still getting worse and her chakra reserves were frowned when she realized nothing was happening, the Kyuubi wasn't healing any of his wounds. What had happened to put him in such a state in the first place?

"Sakura" Naruto rasped out, his breath coming in ragged gasps now. Eyes suddenly clear and sharp. "Bathroom… can you help me get… to the bathroom." he coughed and another trail of blood rolled down his chin to drip onto his chest.

"Wha-" Startled, the partially formed word slipped off her tongue. She stared at him for a moment before taking a breath. "Okay." She wasn't going to ask why at this point even if she desperately wanted to know, it would just make the headache she could feel coming on worse. Anyway she didn't have much of a choice, she had no idea what was going on and Naruto had asked her to trust him so that's what she'd do. _'for now anyway'._

As if reading her thoughts Naruto wheezed. "I'll explain everything later." Then he grunted as he tried to lift himself from the bloodstained floor with his one good arm. Sakura stood quickly from her position hovering above him and grabbed him under the shoulder, heaving him up to stand.

For a minute he tottered shakily before Sakura threw his arm over her shoulders and took most of his weight. for practically the hundredth time ever Sakura sent silent thanks to Tsunade-shishou for training her to have monstrous strength.

Together they stumbled out of her room and down the hall to the bathroom. The kunoichi nudged open the door with her foot and stepped through before Naruto broke out of her hold to stagger further inside. He peeled off his mesh shirt as he stumbled towards the shower and Sakura glimpsed the blood running sluggishly down his side starting to turn black.

Her teammate fumbled with the knob for a second before cold water came streaming out of the shower head and he slid down the wall, this time collapsing on the white shower floor. The dark substance starting running down the drain in rivulets. The more that left Naruto's body, the paler his face became.

Concerned, Sakura crouched down beside the shower just outside of the stream of water "What is that?" she asked.

 **"It's the poison"** Naruto groaned and Sakura gasped at the raspy dual-tone he spoke with. The back of his head thunked against the shower wall and he looked out of the corner of his eyes at her. They were red. **"Kyuubi is pushing it from my body."** She watched as his face contorted into a grimace. **"He's healing my lung as well."** The whisker-marks on his face had darkened too, and now that she looked she could see how his nails had turned to claws.

The pink-haired medic nin swallowed. "You're still in control at the moment, right?" The last time she had, had an encounter with her teammates tennant was not an experience she wanted to re-live. Naruto stared at her questioningly before he realized what she was asking.

Naruto smiled weakly at her **"Of course! Kyuubi's not getting out anytime soon, it's just taking a lot of chakra to patch me up"** His smile turned into a grin, showing off sharpened canines.

She returned his smile shakily. The three parallel scars on her arm had not yet faded and she suddenly had the urge to rub them.

The blonde jinchuriki suddenly gasped and clutched his side. Sakura leaned forward, slightly panicked. "What happened!?"

"It's okay, the poison's gone now, Kyuubi just caught me off guard when he started to stitch the skin back together, it stings like a bitch" Naruto said light-heartedly, removing his hand from the wound so Sakura could watch, fascinated as the skin knitted itself together again, leaving a tender-looking pink line behind. She knew from experience that it would completely fade in a few days time.

The med-nin looked back up at his face when she realized he hadn't spoken with the fox's influence that time. most of the more animalistic features it brought forth were fading as well, only the red eyes remained. "That was a lot faster than you normally heal, I've never seen a wound mend that fast"

He chuckled a bit "The fuzz-ball was worried for a while there, he thought I might not've made it"

Sakura just stared in shock for a moment before shaking her head."You were on the verge of death not long ago and now you're joking about it"

The blond jinchuriki just grinned back at her. "Uh… Hey, can you help me up now?" he said after a few seconds of silence. The shower was still running and they were both still sitting on the floor. Naruto's body was starting to ache now as the last of Kyuubi's chakra withdrew from his coils.

The pinkette snapped back to reality and flushed a little with embarrassment. Quickly she stood up and turned the shower off. Holding out her hand she watched him with narrowed eyes. He stumbled a little as he stood before she sighed and helped him over to the sink.

"Sit" she patted the counter and he didn't argue "I'm going to go get some bandages. Stay" He smiled a little at the way she was talking to him, trying to pretend things were normal. He knew how much she wanted answers, he just didn't know how to tell her, or where to start.

"Thanks Sakura-chan" he mumbled instead. His collarbone ached sharply and the muscle in his bicep was only now starting to knit back together.

She came back moments later with a kit and started bandaging up his side, her fingers skillfully wrapping the white gauze over his shoulder and down his left arm to below the slowly mending muscle, making the bandage stick together with chakra to keep it from coming undone.

Her hands hovered for a moment, glowing green, but quickly dropped to her sides when she found him almost completely healed. "Okay" she patted him on the shoulder "Everything seems ok, although the fox… kyuubi must have been pretty worried to have healed you so fast" She frowned.

Slowly, Naruto slid off the bench and walked towards the door, body stiff and a grimace on his face. "Are you coming" he turned to face her and she nodded, following silently behind him.

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 **A/n: Unfortunately i do not update regularly, so sorry in advance about that. Check out my bio to see if I'm still alive or not if you get worried. I have big plans for this fic, it'll probably be a multi-chap. Please review and give me your opinions, also I'm always open to new ideas. A beta would be welcome, or a kinda co-author, PM me.**

 **Also, please check out my community for some good fic recs.**

 **-RM**


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